Jennifer K. Dick’s Circuits

Tears in the Fence columnist Jennifer K. Dick’s new poetry book, Circuits, from Corrupt Press (http://corruptpress.net) inspired by the popular science of George Johnson’s seminal In the Palaces of Memory is an extraordinary investigation into memory theory and the uncertainties of communication. It is concerned with the library of entanglements that we carry inside our minds and bodies and maps out connections and false starts with pointed collage and conversation. The poems are playful and energetic. Dick allows the connections between information and duration through the body and mind to be laid bare within living communication. There is a commendable clarity and grounding within the exploration of memory’s tissue as well as a balance between the intellectual and physical. The work is open and an opening. It is a tour de force of explorative poetry.

We are looking for (far) inside us. Elusive. Seek, speak of things

called memories, the kind one could bottle, the kind that played

on the station we happened along on the all-night drive.

Dick is renowned for her speed of thought and recitation. Here there is speed and also a slower experiential and spatial deliberation that marks a new maturity in her work. The reader senses the body, a life with disruption and fluidity, and wit permeating a flamboyant yet precise mapping and probing. The poetry beguiles with reference and use of the unsaid and is supported by a useful section of Notes & Credits.